Exactly 100 years to the day and within a few hundred yards of the exact location where the event occurred, Tony Wolfe, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, led a Centennial Celebration on May 13, commemorating adoption of the Cooperative Program at the 1925 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Memphis, Tenn.
“My prayer is that this Cooperative Program Centennial event might reawaken that ‘unity of purpose and consecration,’ which has been evident among our Southern Baptist people in generations past, enlivening us toward a more joyfully sacrificial and missionally effective future,” Wolfe told Baptist Press earlier.
As the centerpiece of the Centennial Celebration, 73 SBC leaders, representing various SBC entities, state conventions, pastors, and Convention diversity, ceremonially signed a declaration of “gratitude to God and solidarity with one another” in Great Commission cooperation.
On May 13, 1925, SBC messengers adopted the Cooperative Program based on a recommendation from the SBC Committee on Future Program led by Louisiana pastor M.E. Dodd. Since then, Southern Baptists have given more than $20 billion through the Cooperative Program, which since has become their primary financial engine for missions, church planting, disaster relief, public policy work, and seminary education of ministers.
Standing behind the very pulpit of Dodd, then pastor of First Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., Wolfe said, “Today, on this historic occasion, we declare our unified conviction that God has chosen to multiply His favor upon the work of Southern Baptists through our Cooperative Program, and we cast our confident faith and our sacrificial cooperation forward in full anticipation that He may do so again.”
As Jeff Iorg, SBC Executive Committee president, and Clint Pressley, SBC president and pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., began the ceremonial signing on Dodd’s pulpit, Wolfe said, “I pray that what is impressed upon our hearts as we observe the signing of this declaration of cooperation is the enduring truth that Southern Baptists are many, but in Christ and through our Great Commission cooperation, we are one.”
In the keynote address, Iorg appealed to the Baptist leaders to reaffirm their commitment to cooperation and the Cooperative Program as the shared funding mechanism for all of the Convention’s work.
“We should do this for many biblical theological and methodological reasons,” Iorg urged, “but mostly for this very practical proven reason: The Cooperative Program works.”
Noting that the Cooperative Program has fueled Southern Baptist ministries and missions endeavors for the past 100 years, Iorg said, “Through Southern Baptists, we have sent missionaries, started churches, strengthened churches, and produced seminary trained leaders by the thousands.
“We have built universities, foundations, hospitals, retirement centers, children’s homes, conference centers and camps. We have developed ministries like Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, collegiate ministries, student ministries, children ministries, and mission trips. We have created a world-class disaster response network along with the largest Christian publishing and ministry-based financial services company in the world,” he continued.
“Brothers and sisters, we stand today in awe of what God has done through a people who reject top-down control in favor of bottom-up cooperation,” Iorg said, adding, “We will continue to see God do even more than we can ask or think as we choose cooperation as our operational strategy and the Cooperative Program as its logical expression.”
In the declaration, the 73 signers resolved:
• “That we … affirm the Cooperative Program as a missions-funding strategy God has blessed to support and strengthen Southern Baptist efforts to share the gospel throughout the world”;
• “That we are grateful for Southern Baptist churches and individuals that give faithfully and sacrificially through the Cooperative Program”;
• “That we commend all who promote, support, and renew their commitment to the Cooperative Program among our family of churches, mission boards, seminaries, entities, local Baptist associations, and state conventions.”
The declaration will be sent to the Resolutions Committee as a recommended resolution for messengers’ consideration at the SBC Annual Meeting in Dallas, June 11–12. If the Resolutions Committee brings forward the declaration and messengers pass it, the document will be posted online for any Southern Baptist to digitally sign.
Wolfe said he hopes “that each cooperating Southern Baptist may feel so inclined to digitally sign the declaration when the opportunity is presented.”
To celebrate this milestone, multiple events have been planned as well as new resources, videos, and a book on our collective effort, A Unity of Purpose, by Wolfe and Madison Grace.
— With reporting by Brandon Porter, vice president for communications at the SBC Executive Committee.